


In the Midnight

by sirenalley



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Begging, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Masturbation, Orgasm Control, Power Play, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:20:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21553750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirenalley/pseuds/sirenalley
Summary: It was enough to deal with that attention every waking moment. The elf’s company was constant, fastened onto him, onto the worm which perched over his ear and around his throat in its possessive coil. No one else could see Aaravos’ hazy, dream-like silhouette, the way he moved with phantom grace and flourish. No one but him. In every corner of his eye, Aaravos was there.
Relationships: Aaravos/Viren (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 334





	In the Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [【授权翻译】午夜](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23460709) by [Goosestep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goosestep/pseuds/Goosestep)



> Anyone else rooting for these hot evil villains? Spoilers for S3 ahead.

The interior of the tent’s canvas was a cool, midnight black. Viren had extinguished the remaining flame moments ago, plunging him into darkness as he prepared himself to sleep. 

Outside came the distant noise of his army, a restless clamor of movement afar, though he knew they would go without slumber tonight. They didn’t need it in their current state. They were strong, powerful, imbued with magical force. 

Another day’s march and they would have their destination at last.

Viren’s camp was a short distance away, positioned at the crest of a hill. No one would disturb him in the night, not unless it was urgent, and so he stripped to undergarments and pulled the tired weight of his body down.

At his feet, there came a slither. The caterpillar—larger and many-legged—skittered across the edge of his bedroll.

“Ugh. You won’t be curling up with me _here_ , will you?”

Gleaming light shone at the closed flaps of the tent, followed by the sensation of air being shifted, and Aaravos came through. The elf’s shimmering body materialized in the dark. The crown of his horns nearly clipped the canvas roof at his full height.

Aaravos bent slightly forward, that infernal smirk affixed. “Not unless you wished me to.”

“I need to rest,” Viren said. “A foreign concept to you, I’m sure.”

“Why ever do you believe that? I may not require it as I am now, but I _do_ sleep, and oh, how I miss the soft press of a pillow against my cheek.”

He watched the elf step further in. There was little space to spare, and Aaravos seemed to claim all of it with the breadth of his presence. Even immaterial as he was, he commanded attention and authority. That majestic silhouette illuminated the tent in a dull, dim glitter of color. Viren remembered how he had looked upon that precipice in Lux Aurea—a cruel glory that sent the Sunfire Queen to her death in a display of devastating nature both brilliant and terrible. 

In urgent moments on the battlefield and against his enemies, Viren was grateful for their alliance.

In quieter moments, ones like these where his mind stewed over the road ahead, he only wondered who, exactly, he had invited into his ear. 

No matter. It was done, and Aaravos had given him the power he’d asked. 

Viren’s eyes rolled as he stretched himself out on his bedroll and pulled the warm wool blanket over his body. “Reminisce elsewhere. I’d prefer not being watched all night in my sleep. It was easier when you were a bug, I suppose, to ignore it.”

Aaravos crossed his arms and pretended to lean against the tent’s wall. He wasn’t really leaning, since he wasn’t really there, so it was for effect alone. There were so many things he did for the _effect_. 

“Would you? Prefer it?”

He glanced up at the drawl. “I would. It’s going to keep me awake, and I need my strength for our assault on the Dragon Queen’s lair.”

“I thought you enjoyed being _watched_. Or am I mistaken?”

Unease pulled at his skin. Viren frowned, then turned on his bedroll with the blanket shrugged up to his ear, putting Aaravos at his back. “You’re mistaken.”

It was enough to deal with that attention every waking moment. The elf’s company was constant, fastened onto him, onto the worm which perched over his ear and around his throat in its possessive coil. No one else could see Aaravos’ hazy, dream-like silhouette, the way he moved with phantom grace and flourish. No one but him. In every corner of his eye, Aaravos was there.

At once a comfort and a horror. What would he do when they were done? What would happen?

There was a rustle of movement like the sound of wind, and he noticed a sudden tingling proximity between them. Strange that he didn’t need to know Aaravos had moved to _feel_ him. 

Yet that was transient and incorporeal, the drag of a feather over skin as bright fingers sunk through his arm. Viren stared down. Then he looked up to see Aaravos’ gleaming eyes, slanted like a wild cat’s.

“What is it? What are you doing?” He half sat up, but Aaravos remained kneeling close, so he would be forced to transition _through_ the elf to complete the movement. Viren froze. 

“You listen to everything I say. Obey every word. A very obedient little human. I can’t help but find it… curious.”

“Don’t fool yourself. It’s not out of trust,” Viren said.

“How much are you willing to obey?” Aaravos hung closer, a looming predator with a silver tongue. “How far will you allow me to take you? Up to the cliff, and over the edge?”

“That’s enough.”

“I wonder,” he drawled on, “if I told you to _lay back down_ and lower the shield of your blanket, would you oblige?”

Viren couldn’t tell whether it was humiliation or terrible arousal that strangled him to quiet then. All of the air pushed out of his throat in one sharp exhale. There was nothing explicitly lewd about the question, and in fact it lacked insinuation. It was simply an order. Yet Aaravos’ delivery—certain, pure steel and command—came over him like some black drowning ocean. He couldn’t breathe, could only look up into that bewitched face and wonder whether it would devour him as his magic devoured the life from primal beings. 

This was foolish. He was perhaps the most powerful human mage in all the land, now, and still he trembled beneath this creature’s glittering spell. It was _unfair_. 

His back touched the bedroll, and one hand tugged the blanket down his chest to his waist.

“Yes,” Aaravos said, slithering over the _s_ at the end. “Such a good little mage.”

“What do you want.”

“I only want what you want. To best serve you, and see your wish for humanity’s preservation granted. Come now, _Viren_.” His own name resembled an incantation, softly murmured, almost reverent. “I haven’t haunted you all these days not to see that which plagues you to distraction.”

“And what is that?”

“Loneliness.” Aaravos smiled. A curtain of white hair fell, and he flinched, though the ends passed harmlessly through his chin. Viren craned his head away. “You long for companionship. For company, for the touch of another hand. Well, you needn’t long again. I am here with you.”

Viren’s tongue was thick in his mouth. There was lewd insinuation now. He stumbled for words: “You can’t—touch me.”

“That’s all right. I’ll watch. Imagination is a powerful substitute, for the time being.”

 _For the time being_. What did time mean to someone who lay trapped in a mirror, likely longer than Viren could guess? Aaravos said it as though this moment was an instant from the next, as though Viren’s life would come and go as quick as the moon crossed the sky. 

Perhaps it was true.

“You’ll watch me do… what, exactly?” He hated the uncertainty of his own voice. He hated anything that did not mean confidence and progress toward a goal. Control bled through his tightly clutched hands. 

“Please, Viren. Do not insult both of us.”

He _ached_. It drove him to obedience, to the further lowering of the blanket, to the frantic pulling at sleep clothes. Aaravos’ eyes weighed down on him like two heavy stones. There was nowhere to go. 

It was something he’d accepted years ago, since his wife went through the door and never came back. That itching and persistent loneliness. A glaring weakness that was extorted now by this otherworldly, mysterious, sinister whisper in his ear. 

At last he was bare in the dark, the glow of Aaravos’ lean shape illuminating the paleness of his own skin. It stood in contrast to the vague blue and purple of the elf above him. It would be worse if only Aaravos had flesh, had realness to him. If only he glimmered, starlit, as his nature.

Viren took his own cock into hand. He was not surprised to find himself stiff and slick already, unable to recall the last time he’d allowed the lowness of indulgence. The craving hunger consumed him. 

He dared not look. Touch led him alone, fingertips catching over rigid flesh as he stroked himself up to the crowned head, gathered that wetness at the slit and greased it down. There was a humiliating noise in his throat. It caught somewhere between despair and pleasure, tongue dragging over the back of his own teeth as he imagined someone else’s fist in place of that touch.

Aaravos’ fingers instead, delicate and slender as he’d watched them work through the mirror, covered in the star-patterns of his race as they seized his dick and worked him slowly to that crested edge.

“There we go,” the elf’s silken voice murmured, not to be forgotten, so low and dark Viren could get lost inside of it. “Doesn’t that feel good? Tell me.”

His grip constricted around the root of his cock in a spasm of muscle. He could feel himself leaking in hideous betrayal of his body to those words. The air was biting cold on his bare skin everywhere else.

“It feels…” His throat worked. “It feels good. Hot, almost burning. It’s too—”

A skitter brought his eyes open. Viren stared wildly at the canvas wall. The overlarge worm had traveled halfway up, peering down with its beady, intelligent eyes. His skin crawled, but his hand didn’t loosen.

“Look at me,” Aaravos purred. His head turned obediently into that bright gaze. “Only look at me.”

It was so easy to fall into the thrum of that command, Viren’s eyes half-closed as a reedy and desperate sound fled his lips. They were so near. Near enough to kiss. If Aaravos was real, their breath would have mingled in a humid cloud, and he would know the heat of that velvet mouth at last.

Instead there was just the breeze, the tingle of effervescent nothing. 

“I’ll tell you when you are allowed to come, little mage. You must obey me. Every word, every utterance, you must follow with devotion. Do you understand?”

Viren’s head jerked. He wanted to close his eyes, but instead he dragged his fist over the tight skin of his cock again and felt his toes curl into the loose wool blanket. 

“Now stop.”

Agonized, he gazed up into Aaravos’ face and found no will to fight. His hand fell limp from between his legs. His cock jutted upward, he could see now, so swollen it lay nearly flat to his belly. It was shiny and flushed a deep pink. No doubt it matched the humiliating color of his face.

“ _Good_.” How a single word could be dragged out like a caress, Viren only wondered. “How glad I am you were the one who found me. You were the one who needed me. Such a good pet and a powerful mage, I can _feel_ the immensity of magic threaded through you.”

Could he? Truly? Viren’s eyes closed, almost drowsy under the stroke of that praise. 

“Dark as the blackest night,” Aaravos said, “and lit only by the stars…”

There was movement again. He started as he watched the elf shift position, swinging a long leg over the bedroll so he straddled Viren. Again, an illusion. There was no weight across his hips, and yet there Aaravos was, perched as though in the seat of a throne.

“Now, Viren, you may touch yourself again.”

It was trickier, because he was forced to reach over those luminous legs to return the palm to his pining cock. Even as he knew he could phase through Aaravos, he refused to do it. He wouldn’t bear the eerie sense of that immaterial contact.

“Beg me,” Aaravos demanded in a tone of liquid steel. 

Viren would go to this altar if it meant release. Too starved, too frustrated, he found himself pleading in a thick and gravelly voice. “Please, Aaravos, _please_ , let me.”

It seemed an eternity to salvation. His wrist ached in the strain, shoulders rolled slightly off the bedroll, feeling his dick throb with every leap of his own heartbeat. 

And then, at last: “You may.”

The orgasm poured out of him in the hottest, blistering rush, thick between his fingers, striping his wrist and inner thighs and pelvic bone. Viren’s voice was smothered beneath his other hand. His breath burst behind it, hot and damp. Through all of it Aaravos remained above him, devilish smirk curled across his lips, an animal satisfied by the hunt.

“We’ll have to remember _this_ next time.” Aaravos reached for him, and he flinched as fingers drifted through the hand clapped to his mouth. Viren lowered it as if burned. “You should not be ashamed of the throes of pleasure, no matter how they might manifest.”

“Get off of me,” Viren said. He was shaking.

“Why? Is something the matter? Don’t tell me I’m heavy.”

In a surge of inspired energy, he rose from the bedroll, twisting himself _through_ Aaravos’ ghostly form, and began to fix clothing back on as frantically as he’d shed them. 

“Oh. I see.” Aaravos hummed. “Is this embarrassment a more ‘human’ trait?”

The tent’s flapping canvas was not as satisfying as the slam of a door. 

Not that the distance of space made any difference. Aaravos would follow at his heels—never tiring, never fading, always there.


End file.
